TwtBizCard Says

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• TwtBizCard – Your twitter business card

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Tags: Business card, Twitter, Twitter Business Card, twtapps, TwtBizCard, twtvite

I owe this to @charbrown from Twitter.  Still trying to learn and make my use of TweetDeck more effective. Charles said to group your favorite Tweeters…. ones who were consistently interesting and you might want to retweet….in one group or column on TweetDeck.  That allows you to clear out some of the noise and focus, for the most part, on only quality Tweets.

Problem was I didn’t know exactly how to do that.  @charbrown to the rescue!  Here’s what he direct messaged me, with admirable brevity:

“At the top of the screen you should see several buttons.  the 6th one from the right has a couple of heads, click that ….

continued) … and it will open up a window you can name your new group, it will also allow you to add selected followers

charles brown / charbrown”

Thanks, Charles.  It’s even easier than that, since a list of people you are following pops up and all you have to do is check their name and save.  Now you’ve also just saved yourself a lot of time sorting through tweets and made your whole Twitter experience more effective.  Thanks again, Charles

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As competition heats up in this tough economy, one way to beat your online competitors is to go local. Even hyper-local.

Fortunately Twitter has the tools to let you do that.  Of course, you are using Twitter to build your brand and develop your relationships with other Tweeple, so you don’t want to overdo it.  But, if you have a product or service to sell, it’s helpful to remind your neighbors what it is.  For example, if you’re selling fresh baked bread, other Twitterers in your ‘hood are not likely to be getting that from Seattle or Chicago, unless they live there. So, your first step is to identify local Twitter users so you can reach out to them

Identifying Local Twitter Users

If you’re interested in local twitterers and happenings, 50 Useful Twitter Tools for Writers and Researchers lists these tools which will help connect you with nearby potential customers and you keep up to date with the local scene:

1. Nearby Tweets: Check out Nearby Tweets to seek out local Twitter users.
2. Atlas: Use Atlas to see tweets on a map.
3. GeoFollow: Using the GeoFollow directory, you’ll be able to find users in specific areas.
4. CityTweets: See real time Twitter activity for cities on CityTweets.
5. Twittervision: Check out Twittervision for real-time geographic tweets.
6. TwitterLocal: On TwitterLocal, you can find tweets in a designated location.
7. Localtweeps: Check out Localtweeps to find Twitter users near you.

These tools make it very simple to hone in on your nearest and possibly your best market.  Happy hunting!

Tags: Social network, technology, Twitter

Jon Morrow , Associate Editor of Copyblogger, who should know, shares with us this pearl of wisdom:

The Oldest Blogging Myth

“Content is king.”

Well, that is pretty discouraging to those of us who focus on producing or discovering great content.  But then Jon explains what, in our hearts, we already know.  In Why No One Links to Your Best Posts And What to Do About It , Jon points out that this is no longer even Web 2.0. It’s moved beyond that.  The era of social media has arrived and that means Friends: Facebook, FriendFeed, the Twitterati. If you want to be popular, you need to start getting hooked up with very popular friends/fellow bloggers.  Or , as he puts it:

“If you want links now, you need to be more than great. You need to be connected.

The Secret to Building a Popular Blog

Remember the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know?”

Well, it’s kind of true. A mediocre writer that’s friends with every member of the Technorati 100 will become a popular blogger faster than a brilliant writer with no friends at all.

Why? Because bloggers link more often to their friends than anyone else. If you write a reasonably good piece of content that interests their audience, they’ll link to you, mainly because they like you.

The secret to building a popular blog isn’t just writing tons of brilliant content. It’s also having tons of well-connected friends.

How to Make Friends with Popular Bloggers

So… how are you supposed to make friends with all of these popular bloggers and get them to link to your best posts?

Traditional wisdom says you should link to their posts, hoping they’ll notice you and start reading your blog. Sometimes it works, but in my experience, you need to be a little more creative. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Write a guest post that gets lots of traffic and adoring comments
• Attend conferences that all of the “Who’s Who” of your niche go to and network your tail off
• Volunteer to “vote” for any posts that they’re pushing on social media sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon
• Email them an irresistible question, hoping to spark a discussion
• Leave lots of truly memorable comments
• Interview them in either a post or a podcast, making sure to ask lots of intelligent questions
• Join their private membership program (like Teaching Sells) and make lots of smart posts in the forums

Give and Ye Shall Receive

We’re not talking about anything new here. Really, it comes down to one of the oldest principles of persuasion: reciprocity.

Contrary to what many people think, A-list bloggers aren’t islands, separate and self-sufficient. They deal with problems and annoyances, just as much as anyone else. If you can help alleviate them, they’ll thank and remember you for it.

The key is finding ways that you can be genuinely useful to them. Make yourself relevant and then use that opportunity to start building a relationship.

Give it a few months, and then start pointing them to your best and most relevant content. They’ll probably link to you anytime you do anything interesting, bringing you lots of readers. They’ll also introduce you to other popular bloggers, giving you a chance to do more favors and expand your network.

It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. If you put as much effort into building relationships as you do writing great content, you’ll have a popular blog in no time.

And better yet, you’ll have made friends with some of the most interesting people on the web. That’s a reward in and of itself.”

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Tags: blog, Copyblogger, Digg, Social media, StumbleUpon, Technorati

David Spark (@dspark), a veteran tech journalist , founder of Spark Media Solutions, who blogs at The Spark Minute, has done a lot of research to see how people succeed at growing their social networks. He discovers the patterns and dishes the inside how to’s at 12 Inspiring Stories of Successful Social Networkers.  They are all interesting and helpful examples, but I particularly liked:

Seed Your Network

“For six months and with only 150 inactive members, the LinkToCharlotte LinkedIn group was languishing. LinkToCharlotte’s goal has always been to connect local businesses and people in the Charlotte, NC area. Founder Andrew Kaplan decided it was time to juice the membership of his group. In June 2008, he reached out to local influencers who could attract others to his local network.

Already having ties with professional sports teams, tourism, and political advisors, Kaplan sent out personal invites to their respective marketing departments to join the group. Quickly seeing the benefits of being part of Kaplan’s local industry network, they in turn sent invites from their lists to join his network as well. Today, LinkToCharlotte’s LinkedIn () group has grown to 2,000, plus it has expanded to include groups on the NING platform, Facebook (), and Twitter ().”

Take a look at how the LinkToCharlotte LinkedIn group , NING platform, Facebook (), and Twitter () all play off each other.  It’s a road map to creating and leveraging your social media assets.

Let me hear what you think if you’ve created or are creating something like this.

Tags: facebook, LinkedIn, Online Communities, Social media, Social network, Twitter

Do you know about Slide Share? As they put it, “Upload and share your PowerPoint presentations and Word documents on SlideShare. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to make a webinar.” Very useful tool. Here’s an example on personal branding. Naturally there’s a lot of “promoting” of Alan Weinkrantz, social media guru and creator of the presentation. But you should view it as how you can put together something like this for yourself.

Tags: Microsoft PowerPoint, presentation, SlideShare, Social media

Just about no one on the Net is more of a guru than Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World and very few are retweeted more.  Does he have a “secret sauce” for getting retweeted?  Well, yes, he says to write better shitake, but he also has some very specific advice and, once you read it, you’ll probably have a Eureka! moment like I did beause it all sounds so simple and self evident when Guy spells it out for you:

Forget imitation as the sincerest form of flattery—it’s as twentieth century as ripping off interfaces, songs, photos, and books. Today, the sincerest form of flattery is retweeting—the process of forwarding someone else’s tweet to your followers on Twitter. (I assume that you know about Twitter. If you don’t, take a minute and read this description at Answers.com.)

The reason that retweeting is so flattering is that every time people do it, they are putting their reputation on the line. If their followers don’t like the retweet, their reputation is reduced. So whenever someone retweets your tweet, they are expressing confidence that what you’ve tweeted is interesting and good. Thus, the best measure of someone’s quality as a Twitter user is not the number of followers but the amount of retweets.

Luckily, there are several sites that measure retweeting: Retweetist and Dan Zarrella’s Most Retweeted. (On both lists, ignore Garymccafrey because that’s a scheme to increase followers and nothing to do with quality retweeting.) These two lists provide a very good proxy for who’s worth following on Twitter. Do notice the Grand-Canyon size difference between these lists of people who are most retweeted and the people who have the most followers at TwitterCounter.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you that frequent retweets is a salient goal. The question becomes, “What do I need to do to get retweeted?” Allow me to digress. I was once asked at a blogging conference what my SEO strategy was (search engine optimization—that is, how to get Google to put your stuff higher in search results). I must have been “on” that day because I said, “Write good shiitake.” (Actually, I used a shorter word than “shiitake,” but I can’t post it here.) The answer to getting retweeted is just about the same: tweet good shiitake, and here’s how:

1. Answer the right question.. There are pockets of Twitter users who want to bond with small group of people and learn the answer to the original Twitter question: “What are you doing?” These are the the folks that enjoy tweets that say, “My cat just rolled over” and “The line at Starbucks is long.” The question you should answer if you want retweets is “What’s interesting?” for your group of followers. For example, the story that Taiwanese scientists bred glow-in-the-dark pigs is a lot more interesting than what your cat is doing and therefore a lot more likely to get retweeted.
2. Tweet about Twitter. Twitter users love to read about Twitter—anything about Twitter: how to use it better, lists of companies on Twitter, lists of CEOs on Twitter, what some analyst thinks of Twitter, what’s wrong with Twitter, list of Firefox plugins for Twitter, the top ten ugliest avatars—you name it. If you find a blog post or new item about Twitter, tweet it, and it will probably get retweeted.
3. Explain how to do something. Whether it’s roast a turkey, hot wire a car, take away an assailant’s gun, kiss a woman, polish silverware, or hack a road sign, the words “How to” and “The art of” are magical terms on Twitter and bound to get any tweet starting with them retweeted. This is because anything starting with these terms is likely to be educational. Power tip: use Lifehacks.alltop and GTD.alltop.
4. Break news. Ironically, you shouldn’t assume that everyone instantly knows that a plane landed in the Hudson just because you do. You could probably follow the Twitter newsbot of CNN (@cnnbrk), retweet its tweets, and get retweeted. Still, what’s the challenge in that? It would be better to find news from niche topics that you are passionate about whether is science (first frozen water found on Mars), fashion, psychology, pets, or politics. If in doubt, tweet it. Most tweets are noise, so yours will probably stand out.
5. Provide the bizarre. Sometimes it scares me, but tweets about bizarre stuff works. For example, could you resist reading and then retweeting a story about robbers who were caught after using women’s thong underwear to cover their faces? Believe it or not, stuff like this gets retweeted.
6. Provide links. There mere existence of a link in your tweet enhances its credibility. Essentially, it’s saying: “This isn’t something I made up or wish; I actually have a verifiable, outside source.” I realize that this is stretching the point, but links are pretty irresistible and get more so as you increase your credibility. The goal is that the link takes people to something that’s enlightening or entertaining, and they thank you by retweeting it. For example, the neuroscience of social conformity.

Finally, there are two tips from Dan Zarrella in “The Science of ReTweets” (this posting inspired me to write this in the first place). First, don’t hesitate to ask people to retweet your tweet. “Please” is a powerful word no matter who you are. Second, tweet from approximately 9:00 am to 2:00 pm Pacific time. My interpretation of Dan’s recommendation is that the West Coast is now up and at work and the East Coast is eating lunch at their desks so that they are checking Twitter.

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Tags: guykawasaki, how to get retweeted, how to increase twitter followers, Online Communities, Twitter

Twitter your way into a job!  Yes, you can.

• Twitter alone offers jobshouts.com (job openings are “tweeted” to users)
• twitterjobsearch.com, a search engine that searches Twitter for jobs that match key words you enter
• JobAngels (twitter.com/jobangels), a kind of one-on-one online mentoring program.

Tags: job, job search, Social network, Twitter

Pete Cashmore, CEO at Mashable, a social media company, and one of the most followed Tweeters on the Net at 319,528
Followers explains #followfriday at Mashable on Tumblr – How #FollowFriday and Hashtags Work. :

Since a lot of people are asking me about hashtags, and a Tweet isn’t enough space to explain, a few quick lines on how hashtags and #followfriday work:

1. Hashtags are used to identify a topic on Twitter. Add # to the front of a word to make it a topic. Example: #followfriday

2. #followfriday is a game in which people suggest who to follow on Twitter. It helps everyone find interesting Tweeps. You list the users you recommend following and add “#followfriday” so people can find your tweet. My suggestions: #followfriday @adamostrow @sharonfeder @jbruin @adamhirsch

3. You can find everyone’s #followfriday suggestions here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23followfriday

Hope that helps.

PS. Pete had nothing to do with the invention of #followfriday. You can thank @micah for that!

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I don’t know about you, but I’m still learning all the best tools for Twitter, learning to tweet and need all the best help I can get.  I found this pretty useful and hope you will too.

GissiSim.com | How to Tweet Deck like a PRO.

How to Tweet Deck like a PRO

People have been asking me for more tips about how I use my Tweet Deck. I was sort of wanting to give twitter a little rest. However the response has been overwhelming, so here we are. I’m personally under the impression that there is no other client worth using. Yes it’s not the prettiest client around. At first it can be awkward to use. However once you learn how to use it like a power user, you’ll never know how you tweeted without it!

First time

When you first start your tweet deck up, you’ll be greeted with 3 columns. All Friends, Replies, Direct Messages, and there might be a TwitScoop column all the way at the right. If TwitScoop column is there, close it quickly with the X in top right. Also close the Replies column. What you want to do first is click on the Search button in the toolbar in the top left, it’s the magnifying glass icon =) Now you’ll get a nice search box popping up. Write your twitter username into it. This is the column that will replace the replies one we closed earlier. The reason we do this is because sometimes people forget to add the @, also you’re own tweets come in there so you can remember what people are replying to =) Now use the arrow at the bottom of your new column to move it to where the old replies column was.

Settings

Something that is worth getting out of the way quickly. There are a few things you want to change right away. Start by turning off the annoying noise tweet deck does every time new tweets come in. Select the Narrow column view, lets you fit more columns in. You can uncheck the “Include All Friends Notifications” since it’s not a very informative notification. I personally prefer the Tweet Window at the bottom, try it out for yourself and see. One other thing that is optional is to Open profiles in web page, it’s good if you are big on looking at profiles since looking at them takes API calls. You only get 100 API calls an hour. I actually have this selected at work. Here is what your general tab might look like: You can play with the Colors/Font tab all you want, I’m not going to give you any pro tips on that =) However the API tab is something you need to look into. It’s hard for me to tell you exactly what is best in your situation, so here is a screenshot of how I have mine set.

Buddies

Once you reach a certain number of people that you follow, your going to want to set up a group. Click on the group button in the top toolbar. In my case I only have one group set up. This group is for my close friends and family, people who’s tweets I don’t want to miss at all. I have very few people in this group just so it doesn’t get over crowded. I’m sure that once people have even more followers it will be nice to set up a few different groups for different groups of people. One for professionals, one for co workers, etc etc. Now there are a few ways to add people to your newly created group. However I find the best way to do this is by mousing over their profile image, click on the more icon. You’ll get a dropdown where you can choose to add them to any group that you would like. Looking at this menu you will see a lot of very useful features. One that I actually use on this list is the Translate one. Sometimes the people I’m following will write one and one tweet in a different language, and instead of unfollowing them like some people do, I just translate the tweet =) Once you reach this point you should have a window that looks something like this:

Search and Filter

Now it’s on to what makes twitter so powerful. I’ve learned to use this to watch how my blog articles are traveling. See what people are talking about on a certain subject. You name it, the search functionality can do it. I’m sure I’m not using it for everything it can be used for yet, however it’s been very useful with how I’m using it as is. You’ve seen how to do a search with your username and replies, so you achieve this in the same way. What I like to write in there is the name of a blog article that I’m promoting at the moment, since people that tweet about it rarely include my name in it anymore. Also this way I can find new people that like my articles and webpage, in return following them or get to know them. If your blog article is long enough it should be enough to just write it as is, however sometimes you might want to put quotes around it “How to blog like a pro” that way you get those words in exactly that order. Another thing I like to do is have a open search on something I’m interested in like Sharepoint, Apple, CMS, PHP, Wordpress etc. This way if I see someone write anything interesting about something I’m INTERESTED in, I can add them =) So here is an example of how my TweetDeck is now: Now there is really one more thing left to talk about and that is the filter. I’ve talked about this before in an earlier article, however I want to include it here as well. At the bottom of every column there is a filtering button. Like I’ve talked about here you can write things like http and RT @ to get some of the best of what your friends are talking about. You can filter more things than just for text, you can filter by User, by Time, and by Service they entered the tweet. So another thing I like to do is select services and write blip to get some good music people are talking about =) One last thing about filtering before I wrap up this article is that you can also select to filter things MINUS a specific word, or time, or person etc etc. Can be very useful if someone is tweet spamming, or however you would like to use it =)

If you have some more tips or hint on how to best use Tweek Deck, please add a comment or Tweet me.  Thanks.

Tags: Social network, TweetDeck, Twitter